Mass graves, blood stains: satellite images point to horrors in seized Sudan city

Satellite images analysed on Wednesday appear to show mass burials being conducted in El-Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized it, further raising concerns about the scale of the violence that descended on the city.

The images of El-Fasher come as the two-year war grinds on in Sudan despite growing international outrage, with local media and the United Nations reporting a drone strike targeting a funeral in another city called El-Obeid, killing at least 40 people.

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab analysed images of El-Fasher shot by Vantor, an imaging firm based in Colorado formerly known as Maxar Technologies.

Those images appear to show mass graves being dug and later covered at two sites in the city, one at a mosque just north of the Saudi hospital where some 460 people reportedly had been killed and another by a former children’s hospital that the RSF had been using as a prison, the researchers said.

“It is not possible based on the dimensions of a potential mass grave to indicate the number of bodies that may be interred; this is because those conducting body disposal often layer bodies on top of each other,” their report said.